


Waking Up

by Teawithmagician



Category: The Strain (TV)
Genre: Ancient Rome, Angst, Drama, F/M, Family Issues, First Love, Half-Vampires, Historical, Historical Inaccuracy, Mysticism, Period-Typical Sexism, Xenophilia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-01
Updated: 2017-07-01
Packaged: 2018-11-21 21:16:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,630
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11365797
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Teawithmagician/pseuds/Teawithmagician
Summary: Sister of Quintus' patron saint takes interest in strigoi investigation, and, apparently, in Quintus himself.





	Waking Up

**Author's Note:**

> Roman Empire timeline, Quintus is a gladiator. Free thoughts on half-strigoi physiology, because I can. Xenophilia based on visible human-strigoi differences.

It had been ages and centuries, but Mr. Quinlan remembered, as he never had a habit to forget. Valeria stood on the white marble steps, her fingers under her necklace, tilting the pendants. She wore dark, and lined her green eyes, one lower than the other, with black kohl.

“What's this? Is it a demon?”

“It's not a demon. It's only a half”.

Quintus stood in the circle of guards, their spears at ready. All those people, they made such ferocious faces, and Valeria's brother spoke as haughtily and complicated as he could, all to frighten a white freak like Quintus, who tore men like them to pieces with his bare hands.

“He looks like one, so I can't... not able to... No, I cannot be sure about it.”

Valeria grabbed the hem of her robe, and walked down, approaching her brother. She put her hand on his shoulder and pulled the corner of her eye with her fingers to see Quintus better. She was pretty, though, maybe one of the prettiest woman Quintus had ever seen, but she didn't look like she cared about it much.

“Just look at his...”, her brother started, and Valeria pressed her hand to her mouth in a gesture of puzzlement.

“The goiter is smaller than it supposed to be, and the distortion is of the lower range. His nose, his ears. Is he able to speak or reproduce like a mammal? He may even have genitalia.”

Nobody spoke of Quintus genitalia in such an exaggerated manner, it sounded funny and Quintus would hold back a smile if he ever smiled. When Valeria stepped forward to look at Quintus from a closer distance, her brother pushed her back.

“I am not dangerous,” Quintus lied, and then he told the truth. “I am here to investigate people, not to perish them”. 

“Really?” Valeria's brother looked amused. “While we go behind demons, demons go behind us.”

“Do you study people?” Valeria interrupted her brother, and he snapped at her:

“Now silence when I speak.”

Valeria looked like she was eager to start an argument, but on the reason unknown she held up her words. The relationship between these two promised to be interesting, yet Valeria was far more curious than her brother.

Her hair was red like fire, and she had a questionable taste of clothes, dressing up more like a wandering fortune-teller. Later he learned she was clumsy, stumbled on every step and hit every corner, with ink leaving its black marks on her fingers and under her fingertips.

She smelt with asphodel, when she touched Quintus' arms, watching his veins through the crooked green glass, and muttered: “Interesting. It's more like you have no worms under your skin. But as your mother was turned into the demon, how could it be the rot didn't affect the fetus?”

Quintus kept his mouth shut, watching her leaning over his pale, lifeless arms. He listened to her heartbeat, feeling the myriads of thin capillaries all over her fingertips, growing through it like roots. He could tell her Ancharia's hypotheses of his origin, but he didn't. It was more fun watching her, trying to figure it out by herself.

“Why do you never talk to me?”, asked Valeria.

“Because I wasn't told to talk”, Quintus answered briefly. His sting stirred in the middle of the throat, he felt like he would enjoy the taste of her blood if it tasted with asphodel. It gave him tickling under his skin, up and down his belly button, stillborn from a dead mother.

Ancharia told him he wasn't dead. His kin wasn't dead, too, yet his type of living was parasitic. Like a mite, he needed the shepherd's ear, or, like a wolf, he desired the sheep's flesh, driven by hunger, though his human half always made him rationalize, and it was going to be the tragedy of his life. Quintus himself didn't think it a tragedy, he took it as an advantage. 

“I used to think that lower ranged demons were subdued to a major demon, the one who infected them. But you seem to have a mind of your own,” Valeria said, tilting the ring with Egyptian azure on her forefinger. “I know you are a half-breed. Have your master ever affected you in dreams and reality?”

It must have been an insult, that word. Valeria's mother was from Ta-Kemet, the Nile granary, and Quintus asked if Valeria considered herself half-breed.

“Not only half,” Valeria's eyes glimmered as Quintus made a good joke. “I'm triple-breed at least. Of Greek, Egyptian and Roman descent. I was raised in Egypt, while my brother stayed in Liguria with our father's family. Egyptians know how to celebrate death.”

“People seem more involved with celebrating life,” Quintus reminded her. At the patrician's villa, he had to wear collar and shackles. They wouldn't stop him either, but Quintus didn't think them a problem as long as he slowly gained the trust of his patron saint.

“Life celebrates itself,” Valeria abutted her fingers into her cheek. “I was sixteen when our parents died and I was left in courtesy of my brother. The loss often makes people search for eternal life, and demons never die from diseases or get old.”

“And you longed for a life of a demon.”

“No, as long as we realized what it was far worse than slavery. Yet, there's something about humans and demons what maybe answer the questions of life and death itself, which maybe makes us complementary to each other. If people didn't die, we would have no room for the newborn. Should we take demons like plagues and disasters which keep the population clear, but if we do, are we no better than cows waiting under the blade of a butcher?”

Valeria looked angry with her own words, her cheeks blushed with enthusiasm, and Quintus felt her blood rushing like a rising tide. The flowing of her blood sharpened his feelings, and he smelled her slightly sweating under her dark robe. 

“You can yield or not, but if you don't overcome, you die,” Quintus said. It wasn't exactly he was going to said, but he remembered gladiators, who stood against him. They were never going to die, they were going to make a fame and a fortune by destroying him. It turned out he was the one to destroy.

“Still it something poetic about resisting even if you barely have a chance. Or that chance would cost you your life,” Valeria answered, pulling her finger. 

The ring with a winged beetle fell on the floor, making Quintus' ears clatter from the inside. When Valeria bent over for her ring, her hair spread over her back, and Quintus felt like running his fingers through her hair. He wanted to pull her hair, to make her kneel before him, and when Valeria straightened, she looked at him with her eyes wide open.

“What did you say? I've heard a voice, and it said... It didn't speak. It was more like in my head.”

“I said nothing.” 

“Nevermind. If I don't sleep well, I hear voices,” Valeria put the ring back on her finger. “I will come to see your fight, as my brother has the business of his own.”

“Yes, mistress.”

It was the first time Quintus called her mistress. He figured out it was a good way to show he was not going to be a danger. This time it didn't sound like it was supposed to, and it irritated Quintus. He wondered if she would really come, as he brother was a frequenter, and she only came if she wanted to see something “for the sake of her works”. She came.

There she stood, in the lodge, her recalcitrant hair forced to lay over her head in a hairdo which made her look older and sulkier, watching him walking under the sun with a bone sword in his hand, covered in wet sand to protect his smoking skin. Her look made him feel unsatisfied, but not unfocused. He still won, though wins became as boring as never before. Quintus wanted her to come, but it turned out not what he wanted.

People were no match for Quintus, yet they made so much fuss about their small wins and great losses. Gladiators embraced lovers in their arms, covered in sand and blood, and Quintus felt a slight curiosity: how it would feel being loved and watched from above with engrossed eyes.

He killed a few beasts and defeated a tall sturdy man, a Kappadokian fighter. The tactics were plain and simple, and the lack of resistance made Quintus angry. He knocked the Kappadokian from his feet and put his feet on his chest, his rival gasping and bulging his eyes. Quintus' stinger ached and burst in his throat, he swallowed sticky spittle, holding the handle of the sword. People cried with joy and anticipation, but when Quintus looked at the lodge, there was no Valeria there.

The neck cracked. Quintus left the arena hungry and angry.

Down the tribunes, in a poorly lit passage Quintus was ready to leave for his quarters when he sensed the smell of asphodel and a quiet bump with which Valeria graciously hit the wall with supposedly her hip due to the range of the sound. She put her hand on Quintus' elbow, covered with blood, and he felt her touch echoing in his stomach.

“Tomorrow I need you to go down with me into the caves near the villa. The drawings on the wall make me think once there lived people who worshiped demons as gods. I want you to comment on them.”

“Every god is a demon,” Quintus answered. Maybe it was the torches except it wasn't, Quintus never let people trick him into believing their words instead of looks, but Valeria's eyes shimmered in the darkness. Her fingers touched his elbow, and the feeling in the stomach didn't go. It was like a nausea Quintas sometimes felt drinking wine he was never able fully to digest. He hardly dissolved human food, but when he was a child, he sometimes hopelessly pretended he was just like everybody else.

“Do your brother know?” Quintus asked, and Valeria shook her head.

“He doesn't need to know. This is my work, not his. He likes to believe in dark forces, and I want to know what's behind them.”

The first thing Valeria did when Quintus arrived under the gladiator school guard, was sent away the guards and taking the keys from the shackles from her belt. Valeria was tall, as tall as Quintus, and when she unlocked his collar, he looked her into the temple there a thick blue vein pulsed, perfectly seen under Valeria's marble white skin with a rare freckle scattering.

“Aren't you afraid of me?” Quintus asked, and Valeria made him raise his hands to unlock the shackles, too.

“If you wanted to kill me, you would do it for thousands of times.” 

There were pitted stripes on his wrist, and Valeria rubbed them, watching his arms with her head down. 

“I thought you regenerate fast, but I sill a few scars.”

“Not all the wounds heal equally fast.”

“The silver ones?” Valeria asked, raising her head. Quintus released one hand and unrolled long, loose sleeve of her chiton, exposing soft milky forearm. The veins lied closer to the skin near the shoulder joint, and Quintus ran his fingers up her forearm, following the run of her blood. The beat of her heart was like music, it made his head a drum.

“How dare you,” Valeria said with an effort. “How dare you touch the arm of a noble woman like that.”

“You told me you don't believe in such things. You told me it was barbaric. People are no tools with philosophical works justifying it or without,” Quintus responded. He knew Valeria wasn't looking at him, and he wanted to look at her, to see her face, to see her dark green eyes in the circles of kohl like he was her equal.

Looking him in the eyes, Valeria put her hand on his shoulder, her fingers slightly trembling. She moved her thumb through the curl of the old scar from the silver sickle on his chest. Quintus remembered the pain from the wound, his shoulder swollen and oozing with white pus looking like a fish' blood. Valeria had cool fingers, human were cool-blooded beasts in comparison with Quintus body temperature.

He liked the cool of her skin. Through her arm, he felt her heartbeat, he could imagine her heart beating in his hand, faster and faster, pumping blood through all her body, making her skin warm up, making Quintus painfully aware and, in the same time, still like a statue.

“Do you want my blood?” Valeria asked solemnly. 

Quintus didn't answer. He put his finger between Valeria's clavicles, the fossa was deep enough to contain his thumb to the very nail. Quintus moved his finger under her clavicle bone, thinking about the graciousness of the slightest bone curve.

“Do you want to be taken by a demon, covered with battle scars and blood of his victims? I heard Roman women are fond of these kinds of things.”

Valeria raised up her eyes. In the shadow of the dying sun, they were green no more, they looked more like amber from the distant northern shores. 

“That's what you think of me. What should I think of you, should I consider you a demon and a murderer?”

“Yes,” Quintus said. He never said it aloud, still, Valeria answered as though seeing no difference.

“That's not true. You have a mind of a philosopher, and you are the person whom I wouldn't even try to describe as blood-lusting or barbaric.”

“You know nothing of me.”

Valeria made the anger rise, and her arms on his shoulders, now both of them holding him made his hands run down her back, the capillary net on her spine slowly unrolling under his touch, pulsing like swollen bloody wings.

“You know nothing of me,” Valeria answered.

The caves went deep into the hills, surrounding the villa. Valeria held a torch, walking behind Quintus. He listened to her quiet breath and the rustle of her steps echoing in the darkness of the cave, alert and ready to fight, but the caves were abandoned centuries ago. The sound tore no silhouettes out of the darkness, the torch Quintus didn't need lighten up the walls covered with pictures of wild bulls, antelopes, and deer, dark people with horns and white people with hollow black eyes.

Quintus stopped against the wall and Valeria bumped into his back. The torch nearly burned his ear, and Quintus took it from Valeria's hands, raising it over the wall to let her see the long line of fresco made in simple lines of ash mixed with fat and red clay.

“Have you ever seen something like that?” Valeria asked. The dark people on the wall bend before the white creatures, and above them, a black silhouette rose, casting the shadow on them all. “They made sacrifices. The worshiped them and made sacrifices.”

Valeria pointed out her finger, showing what Quintus had already noticed: the long line of little dark people on their knees before the white ones, red clay spears bursting out of their heads and piercing the bodies of the dark ones. The dark ones spread before the white ones not even trying to cover, they fateful gestures speaking of humility and submission.

“I know,” Quintus said. “My mother was given to a demon as an offering. At the moment, she was bearing me.”

Quintus felt Valeria's fingers pushing through his fingers. 

“Gods were never fair.”

“It's not about gods.”

“If the gods were fair, they didn't allow these things to happen. But the gods are dead.”

“Why do you say it?” Quintus squeezed Valeria's hand. So cold, it lied in his heated hand. It was like holding a dove, so fragile you could kill it with just pressing your hands.

“Do you believe in gods? Do my words sound like blasphemy to you?” Valeria laughed, and Quintus shook his head.

“No. Humans believe in gods.”

“You are a human, too. Why don't you believe?”

“I am not a human. I am a half-blooded demon,” 

“When I first looked at you, I saw a monster. But when I looked for the second, for the third time, I saw the thoughtfulness in your eyes and heard the honesty in your words. I rarely see them even in the eyes and words of my own brother. He will force me to a marriage sooner or later, once he decides it'll be better for him, and I want to marry no stranger. I want to study the thing I do,” Valeria said, looking at the wall. “I want to know more.”

Quintus looked at Valeria, and she looked at him back with the corner of her eye. He wanted to tell her to look at him and to never look aside. He wanted to open his mouth wide, like a snake, and let his stinger out, dark red in the color of steaming guts, with sharp claws on both sides, releasing itself like a demonic plant from his throat, from his chest.

He wanted to tell Valeria, look, it is what you want to know. I can look human but I am one of them, and I know it. What do you see in me what makes you talk this way? What do I see in you why I can't do that, I don't want to frighten you?

“You are beautiful,” Quintus said instead of that. “And too smart for a woman.”

“Do you think a woman shouldn't be smart?”

“No. But a smart woman will always be in sorrow. My foster mother once told it to me.”

“My mother used to say I am her sun and stars,” Valeria smiled. “But my brother only says I should be grateful that he leaves me some freedom before he arranges my marriage. When I told him I may not want to marry anyone at all, he hit me. Nobody hit me since I became a woman. And he hit me, and told me to shut up and do what he says like I am a slave to him.”

“Does your brother beat you?”

“He used to do it when he became the only heir, and I was a child. He did in no more until that day.”

Quintus kissed her, cautious about the stinger and the closeness of her pulse, drumming in his ears. He never kissed a woman before, and Valeria in his arms felt no more experienced than he was. It was still clumsy, but slow, and sweet like honey he only licked and was never able to taste as the threw out violently on any food but blood. 

For the first time, they hardly parted lips, but for all the times after they did it in all the ways they wanted, and it was good.

When they left the caves, the twilight whirled, as the sun feebly lit up the dark blue sky above the hills. Valeria waved her hands while balancing on a path, and Quintus felt free to grab her belt, catching her before falling. The burned torch he left at the cave exit, they didn't need it anymore. Valeria's hair slid on Quintus' arm, and when Valeria turned back to look at him, he felt like she was looking at somebody else because he wasn't used to be looked at like this.

“You called me 'it' when you first saw me,” he said.

“It was because I thought you were a monster, and you were not.”

“I still am.”

Quintus took Valeria's hand like he has a right to do it, and it felt right, too. He thought about her brother, the shackles and looked doors, servants, and guards, about how they needed to be cautious, but the night came, and the things had changed. In the darkness, Quintus saw even better than in the light of day, so soon it was him who took Valeria down to the pond in olive trees grove, as she complained she couldn't see a thing.

He held her hand, and she still touched him with her another hand< his elbow, his wrist. Quintus had seen it all before, all that couples in the summer heat searching for a quiet place for themselves, with or without flowers in their hair, laughing or smiling mysteriously, as though they were not going to turn into dust, die from fever or colic, in the labor or at war. He could hardly believe it was happening to him, and unusually quiet Valeria must be at the same ease with that like he was.

On the edge of the pond, Valeria slowed her pace, and Quintus turned back. He never turned back to look at her, as if she was Evridique, who could disappear if he dared to have even the quickest glance at her. She looked embarrassed but decisive, and he felt the words slowly coming out from the clew of thoughts in her mind.

“I don't like water, even the still one,” Quintus warned her, and Valeria murmured, “So it is true that your kind is able of mind reading.”

“Not always. Sometimes I can do that.”

“I want to swim, so you'll have to wait for me if you won't join me.” 

“You don't even know if I have genitalia,” Quintus said, wondering, if it sounded like a joke, not even knowing if it sounded like one.

“And do you?” Valeria laughed nervously, touching the fibula of her rope. 

They looked next to each other and stared into the violet darkness, Quintus heard Valeria forgetting to breathe. Quintas was the first to unbutton his belt, and Valeria pulled the fibula right after him, maybe even closing her eyes before it. Her breasts were small and pointy, over the wide hips were was a notably smaller waist with a delicate shape of a little belly. 

“Do... do you have desires of flesh or...” Valeria stumbled. “The demons, they normally don't.”

“I know.”

“Do you?”

“Rarely,” Quintas said briefly, absorbed at the view of her body. Valeria touched his chest, circling the skin with the ends of her nails. This gave him a funny feeling, still, he was lost in what he saw, what he sensed, what he smelled.

Before twenty, he was unaware of him having the interest for women. He saw beauty, distinguished it, had his own tastes of it, but didn't need to interact to feel pleased. He needed no touches, never woke up in the middle of the night from his drowsiness full of visions, caught in between the wet sheets, with semen smeared over his hips. 

When it started, it was a change what was hard to notice. Quintus looked and felt like touching, like running his fingers through the hair, like pressing his hands to the hips, but the feeling was uncertain. The tension came a few years later, and it always came along with hunger. Soft flesh, curvy shapes, full of life and blood aroused him, it was hard to divide hunger from desire, and he was not going to mix it up.

Quintas caught Valeria's hand and touched her breast. It was as soft as he imagined, springing from the inside. Valeria breathed through her clenched teeth and pulled Quintus hand, pressing it to her cheek, and that made Quintus woke up. He felt it rising from his insides, under his belly button, from between his hips, out of his chest, tickling on the tips of his fingers.

“Your pilications, they are moving,” Valeria said, looking at his neck.

“Don't be afraid,” Quintus muttered. He wanted to say it louder, but he was too involved with what was going on inside of his head, in his body and under his skin.

He pressed on her shoulders, making Valeria lay down. He put hands on her hips and she embraced him impatiently, fragile, soft and moist. He felt the flow of her blood with all his skin, and it thrilled him it wasn't about blood this time, but about what he held in his hands, caressed and squeezed. Valeria lied under him, her arms across his spine, on his shoulders, fingers sliding up and down his cheeks.

Her lips were red and swollen from kisses, and he suddenly wanted to bury his teeth in them, to feel her blood in his mouth, smearing it all over her face, and when she gasped and bent forward like a longbow, stuck his stinger right between her clavicles. The fantasy made his flesh hardened painfully, it cut him like a knife into the groin, aching all over his body.

“You want my blood,” Valeria said definitely, she wasn't asking anymore, and Quintus clenched his teeth, closing up his fingers on her throat. Valeria opened her mouth and he kissed her with fierce tenderness, feeling his lips sticking into the teeth, scratched by them. Valeria sighed, and he moved forward, burying himself into her, his hand abutted into the ground.

It was like feeding on her, a strong, gripping feeling, but it also hurt deep inside, and the eye of the pleasure was the pain – the reduction of muscles, the spasm setting blood on fire, the hunger pent-up, the joy of her drumming heart in his ears, in his chest, in his throat. Valeria pressed her forehead to him, her cheek, her lips, and he kissed her, begging for the caress, slowly losing his breath.

Mr. Quinlan must have accepted, it was one of his favorite experience. His human side had never been so strong in him after. Even the time he married, hoping for a life he considered proper and normal, his marriage bore the shadow of Valeria, who showed the way to his other desires. He was in love with her, and this love made him feel everything thousands of times stronger and fresher. All his senses sharpened, all his feelings grew higher, and his hunger backed down. 

He felt victorious, he felt glorious, he felt Invictus. He even felt something in common with the other fighters, now matter how pitiful and sentimental it sounded. On one hand, Quintus analyzed the feeling and realized that on the basis of this lied the most simple feelings, even instincts, and on the other, seeing Valeria on the tribunes, in the lodge, he raised his hand and saluted her, feeling so alive he wanted to laugh.

She waited for him under the tribune, on the fighters' entrance, standing in the shadows, with the cloak on her hand. Quintus kissed her hard as there was no one around – Valeria must have insisted it was a private conversation, and maybe added she would be speaking on behalf of her brother, it always helped to get rid of the guards. He was returning from Liguria soon, it must have altered the course of their meetings, but Quintus knew for sure if he didn't want to be noticed, no one could tell he saw him.

“Why did you saluted?” Valeria asked.

“Because this one was for you.”

She didn't smile, her face grimaced. Valeria embraced Quintus, the way she did it made him feel uncomfortable. 

“My brother finally found me a fiance. Soon we won't see each other so often. I will stay in Rome for a while, but after I have to go to Britania, where my future husband services.”

Valeria rested her head on his shoulder in silence, and Quintus put his hands on her shoulders' blades, hardly shaped under the robe. A recollection came to him in the dim and slow morning light. Valeria would belong to someone else because it was just what the humans did – they found partners, strengthen ties between themselves and reproduced. Quintus knew the scheme. It didn't look easy to agree with anymore.

“He is said to be a good man, an old soldier, demanding, but not cruel. He may be kind to me, or may not, I hope he may. It can turn to be dull, but I will survive it.”

Quintus was thinking, listening to Valeria's voice. It must have been inevitable, it all coming to an end like this. Valeria must have become a wife and a mother, have children and die, and he will live through her life alone. Quintus didn't want it that way, but it was no other way for it to be. 

“Why are you so calm?” Valeria moved away, looking at Quintus with dry, desperate eyes. “It is my marriage. and you don't even care. Why don't you talk to me?”

“Because I am the Sicilian Demon. And I am not a patrician.”

“Yes. You are no match for me.”

These were the words Quintus must have said. Said by Valeria, they sounded like a slap in the face.

“What a nice adventure before a family life.”

Quintus looked at Valeria's neck, at the blue veins. Coming under the skin on both sides of it.

“What kind of?”

“The love of a demon.”

“How dare you!” Valeria cried, and Quintus pressed his finger to his lips. Echo from the entrance easily reached the sentry room. Rushed forward, Valeria raised her hand to hit Quintus in the face. He grabbed her hand before she did that.

“You hurt me. Let me go!” Valeria demanded. Quintus lost hold of her fingers.

“You told me I am no match for you.”

“Do my words hurt you?” Valeria asked with insatiable curiosity, and it disgusted Quintus. 

“The truth hurts only a fool.”

“Do you want me to belong to the other man?”

“Do you want me to ask you to run away together and live in caves? That's no life you desire. What are you blaming me for?”

“Of you never asking me so,” Valeria spat into his face and turned her back on him. 

She turned his irritation into the coldest anger in a few seconds. Quintus turned his back on her and reached the end of the passage, minting his steps. Valeria and her wild mood swings were sickeningly changeable, thoughts of them only kindled the anger. How dare she accuse him, when she herself accepted her fate like a sheep at a sight of a knife?

Quintus turned around the corner when he felt the presence, the giant, dark, malevolent presence, which could easily fill in the whole theater. Torches went out one by one, and the darkness fell. There were no guards in sight, not a single breath or a heartbeat on miles and miles around, one of the things He could do.

Quintus rushed back to see Valeria spread on the floor, a white cadaver sticking with its thick, dark red stinger of the color of bull's tripe to her neck. The sword cut him through the neck and hit the head, the head exploding with worms, covering Valeria's robe, corpse-like on the dark blue.

Quintus stood on his knees beside her. Valeria hiccoughed and gurgled, blood smeared on her chest, with red drops on her chin and cheeks. Her shaky hand grabbed Quintus knee, outstretched to the sword he stuck into the ground. Quintus was supposed to say something like, oh, my neverending love, my hand would never take your life, but it was no Greek tragedy. It was for real.

The worms found the way to Valeria's neck. Quintus grabbed them into a handful and smashed, feeling the tickle as they tried to get under his skin, and, having tasted it, remained disappointed. There was no salvation for the one who was wounded by the demon as the worm spawn got inside and started to alter a man into a beast. A woman into a monster.

Quintus took his sword, putting his hand on Valeria's forehead. She looked at him, trembling, blood wheezed and gurgled in her throat. Quintus heard the sound of steps in the beginning of the passage, discordant, they sounded like a few people walked there on their four, three and two legs, stumbling yet still hurrying. “Don't.. hesitate...” Valeria whispered, crumpling the edge of his leather skirt. Quintus moved his hand further, running his fingers through the fiery gold of her hair. 

Vertebra crunched under the blade, and blood sprang through Valeria's mouth into Quintas'. His heart, his arms, his legs filled up with lead, so heavy he should have grown into the ground like a sorrowful tombstone. He threw the sword aside, straightening slowly and inexorably to face the attackers. He needed no sword. He had his hands to tear up the stingers from their throats.

It's been ages and centuries until Mr. Quinlan figured it out: if you care for somebody, under the circumstances you'd better stay away from them as far as possible because the worst thing you can happen to them is you. 

"Walk out the shadows, sir. Take away the hood."

He heard her coming to him, trying to conceal her presence. Woman as tall as him, of average weight, trained on the level of a city guard. A policewoman who followed him in the shadows to tell him to show himself. Brave, but stupid. It already felt like supper.

Mr. Quinlan took his hood off and turned back slowly, ignoring her demands to raise his heads up and place it behind the back of his head. It the poor lit, his day vision mixed up with night one, still he saw her clearly. Her hair was fiery red, and one of her eyes was slightly lower than the other one. 

Valeria, Mr. Quinlan thought distantly.

"How the fuck do you know my name?"


End file.
